The studios providing Netflix with its content are deathly afraid of you recording one its streams. While there are a litany of easier and higher-quality methods to get pirated content, the studios are set in their ways, refusing to let Netflix stream video to a device without a secure delivery pathway. Without a DRM solution that could be deployed universally to Android devices, Netflix has yet to get permission to release an Android app.

Android 3.0 hints at part of the solution, with the ability to install DRM plugins specific to the device’s hardware. Apps could then call these secure plugins in order to prevent content from being ripped by the viewer. According to Qualcomm, its phones running Snapdragon processors (like the Revolution) will be the first ones capable of streaming Netflix. Presumably, phone manufacturers will have to come up with their own versions of this DRM system on a processor-by-processor basis. The speed at which they can do that will likely determine who gets Netflix before whom.